South Korea, the Powerhouse

choi

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David Pilling, South Korea is no longer the underdog. Financial Times, Feb. 25, 2010.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/10c98f68-21ae-11df-acf4-00144feab49a.html?nclick_check=1
("Its success is too dependent on a clutch of huge conglomerates such as Samsung.")

Note:
(a) Ms. KIM Yu-na, "as expected," received a gold medal in figure skating, the first for S Korea.
(b) Mao ASADA 浅田 真央
(c) From CIA World Factbook (2010; the numbers are 2009 estimates):

.....................S Korea.....Taiwan ...India ....UK .......France
Population ..........48.5m ......23m ......1.157b ...61.1m ....64m
total GDP (PPP) .....$1.343t     $693.3b ..$3.548t ..$2.165t...$2.1t
total GDP (nominal)..$800.3b ....$357.3b ..$1.243t ..$2.198 ...$2.635t
per capita GDP (PPP) $27,700 ....$30,200 ..$3,100 ...$35,400 ..$32,800
export ..............$355.1b ....$198.4b ..$155b ....$351.3b ..$456.8b

So,
(i) That S Korean "economy is practically as big as India's" is a stretch.
(ii) That S Korea "exports more goods than the UK" is true.
(iii) That in economy, S Korea "is now snapping at the heels of Britain and France" is an exaggeration.

Besides, it is correct that "Samsung, not long ago considered a poor-man's Sony, overhauled Hewlett-Packard last year to become the world's biggest technology company by sales."  Incidentally, in US, HP is the largest technology company by sales/revenue, whereas Apple is the largest tech company by (stock) MARKET CAPITALIZATION.

(c) hock (n; Dutch hok: pen, prison): PRISON; DEBT (in the context here)
(d) parsimonious (adj): "frugal to the point of stinginess"
(e) Korean won against one US dollar: 1050 in early August 2008 (when financial crisis was about to start); in a free fall to 1,500 early December 2008; recovering a bit; falling again to 1,550 in March 2009; coming back to life to 1,160 today.


My comment:
(a) But see

Moon Ihlwan, Korean Tech Is Losing Its Cool; How Korea, a onetime digital trendsetter, became a laggard in an era of smartphones—and amazing apps. BuinessWeek, Feb. 17, 2010.
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_09/b4168024781121.htm

Excerpt in the window of the print: 1.8%: world software market share vs. 50% for memory chips and LCDs and 35% for flat-screen TVs

(b) Export is not the whole story.
(i) Unilever is a Dutch-British multinational corporation with headqarters at both Rotterdam and London. British petroleum pumps oil worldwide. Those made outside UK do not count for GDP for United Kingdom.
(ii) Likewise for Taiwan. Taiwan has many factories abroad. See, e.g.,

Taiwan's Formosa to build steel plant in Vietnam. AFP, Feb. 21, 2010.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100222/bs_afp/taiwanvietnamcompanyinvestformosa_20100222040324
($3.1b)

N.B. Vietnam has a large reserve of both iron ore and coal.

(c) Taiwan is not part of ASEAN Plus Three (China, S Korea and Japan) free-trade zone. Pres. Ma Ying-jeou, using scare tactics, wants to forge a trade agreement with China. But most Taiwanese are not buying it, especially when both the Ma administration and China withhold ANY information about the agreement. Taiwanese businesses have made investments (such as Formosa's) to overcome the disadvantages Taiwan might have. As a proof, order from China and Hong Kong combined (for Taiwanese goods) increased 135% in January 2010 compared with the same month a year ago, according to Taiwan's Ministry of Economic Affairs on Feb. 25, 2010--although ASEAN Plus Three started on Jan. 1 this year and, Pres. Ma asserts, Taiwan is disadvantageous due to tariff when Korean and Japanese goods are exempt when moved in the trade zone.

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